Friday, November 18, 2011

This show will go down in NYFW Spring 2012 infamy as the show that wouldn't end. This would be a good lesson to all designers who ever plan a show that they intend clients buyers or press to attend.

The average professionally produced fashion show is about ten minutes, fifteen tops. Anything more, you just lose everyone's attention span. At the Eva Minge show, at the 20 minute mark, exasperated signs, annoyed eye rolls were rampant throughout the audience and photographer's pit. At the 25 minute mark, photographers were screaming:

"NO MORE!"

"ENOUGH ALREADY!"

By the time the show ended (around 45 minutes), some of the photographers had already packed up and left. I tried to stay, but the battery on my camera, and memory chip had already been spent.

It's one thing to have a slightly longer show, if everything in the show had a purpose, or was a masterpiece that you did not even notice the time. However, as you can see above, everything looked similar. Photographers in the pit made sarcastic remarks that the designer must have cleared out her closet and thrown everything she could find in a shopping mall on the runway. White, black, stripes, gold zippers, shawl collars for the 20th? 50th? 100th time?

The audience and press found the entire production disrespectful. It was inconvenient enough to hold a show on the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week schedule off-property. It's even worse to run so far overtime and then screw over the designer following (no one from this show made the Venexiana show afterward). Then to show a poorly (or completely unedited) collection of the same look over and over again? Unacceptable.

If you manage to wrangle some "celebrity" models, at least dress them in something flattering. Poor Rocco Leo Gaglioti, quite handsome in day to day circumstances, was squeezed into some bike short type outfit that gave the look of 1980's love handles that I'm sure he doesn't have.

To be fair, the basic colors and silhouettes were very saleable. I'm sure this line is very popular with her Ms. Minge's core customers and fans. Had the presentation been edited down to its key looks, it could have been a crisp, chic sportswear line. Instead, the end result was just a hemorrhage of clothing. Have the people of Poland never heard "Less is More"?

To all current and future designers, please learn from these mistakes, and you won't inspire a blogger's rant line mine.